Circumventing India’s radio news ban

Violence against provincial journalists, self-censorship, and the rise of paid news were the leading press freedom concerns cited by editors and journalists that I met with during my recent visit to India. But for Shubhranshu Choudhary, known as Shu, it’s the ban on radio news that most concerns him. He believes the ban is fueling India’s long-simmering Maoist insurgency, and he’s fighting back, using mobile phone technology to bring independent news to the tribal regions where the Maoists operate.

India’s
media is incredibly lively and booming. There are at least 60,000 print
publications in the country, and the major cities often boast half a dozen
competing dailies. All-news cable stations have sprung up throughout the
country, offering a mix of political and business coverage.

But radio news is not part of India’s media landscape: Only the
government-run All India Radio is authorized to broadcast news on FM. There are
no local news or community radio stations. I heard two explanations for
the ban. The first was that the Indian government wants to maintain control
over radio because of concerns that irresponsible programming could fuel
religious tensions. The second is simply that authorities have been slow to
dismantle the government radio monopoly.

Regardless, the effect is that in a country with hundreds of
different languages and a literacy rate of around 65 percent, a large portion
of Indian’s 1.2 billion people do not have access to independent news and
information.

In the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh state, villagers tell
Choudhary that they have no voice in the media and therefore no way of
effectively communicating with each other or making their concerns known to
policymakers in the state capital or New Delhi.

Most people in the region where Choudhary works are
illiterate and have no electricity. All India Radio is not broadcast in Gondi,
the local language. Print reporters, says Choudhary, write for regional and
national papers and do much of their reporting by phone. “Reporting
is completely one-sided," Choudhary explains. "You get your reports from police sources and you don’t
need to go the villages.”

Choudhary believes that feelings of isolation and
marginalization fuel the Maoist insurgency. Known as “Naxalites” for the town
in West Bengal where the insurgency began four decades ago, the Maoists are
active today in a large swath of India’s tribal belt that stretches
over six states. Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh has declared the Naxalites one of the greatest threats to India’s security.

Choudhary, a former BBC producer and Knight
International Journalism Fellow has worked with Microsoft and MIT to
develop new a system that allows tribal villagers to use their mobile phones to
disseminate and receive news. It works like this: Villagers
who want to report news call a phone number and leave a recorded message in
their local language. The information is then verified and disseminated via
mobile phone, SMS message, and a Web site, Cgnet.

“We’re excited about voice in general as an interface in
low-income communities,” says Bill Thies, a researcher with Microsoft in Bangalore, who helped
develop the project. Since it launched in February, more than a thousand
villagers in Chhattisgarh have called in with their news tips and to access the
information via cell phone.

“Our role technologically in this is to make it as easy as
possible,” says Choudhary, who has been training villagers to function as
citizen journalists. “We want to demystify the media. Journalists think
they are god’s gift to man. It’s really pretty simple to be a
journalist. You just push a button and talk.”

Mobile phone technology is empowering poor people not just
in India, but also in African villages and Latin American slums. If Choudhary
succeeds in his ambitious goal of using mobile phones to circumvent traditional
media, his project it could have an impact in the many places around the world
where radio is either unavailable or not responsive to the needs of the local
community.

Joel Simon is the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. He has written widely on media issues, contributing to Slate, Columbia Journalism Review, The New York Review of Books, World Policy Journal, Asahi Shimbun, and The Times of India. He has led numerous international missions to advance press freedom. His book, The New Censorship: Inside the Global Battle for Media Freedom, was published in November 2014. Follow him on Twitter @Joelcpj. His public GPG encryption key can be found here.

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